If you want to sell your property, Christmas is a goo...

Loveitts is encouraging sellers to jump at the opportunity to put properties up for sale during the Christmas period, following a recent study carried out by Rightmove.

According to the property website, consumers are becoming more eager to surf the internet for properties as well as retail sites on Boxing Day.

This study challenges the popular belief that most people buy during the spring or early autumn, while sellers dodge the summer and winter months as these often fall during peak holiday times.

Rightmove’s figures show that the number of visits were up 20% from January 2015 to January 2016, with over 127 million visits in the previous December. This surpassed the previous total of 118 million visits in August 2015 – a record at the time.

Furthermore, there was a 15% increase of contact by email from January 2015 to January 2016, hitting over 4.9 million emails. This was also higher than July 2015’s record month of over 4.8 million. On January 26, Rightmove saw its busiest day with 4.7 million visits to their site.

This wasn’t the first time. Going back even further, in 2013 Rightmove reported that it received nearly 14 million page views, with over 10,000 people taking the time out from the festive season to send emails to agents.

Boxing Day was even busier with page views rising to over 25 million, up 21% on 2012. Views peaked on New Year’s Day, with 38 million visitors.

“The growth in sales enquiries over the Christmas and New Year period has been growing year on year and we anticipate we will see an even greater number of enquiries this year,” Chris Priestley, head of residential sales at Loveitts, said.

Priestley believes these statistics will give sellers the confidence to put their property on the market. “With the advent of the internet, the way we search for property has changed dramatically,” he said.

“This is also a time of year where there is less property on the market so as a seller your competition levels are lower.”

He added: “These stats show that purchasing a property is still a high priority for those that have the ability to purchase. A pro-active agent will see a high level of sales throughout December and this has always been the case, but it is good to see some hard evidence to back it up.”